forever and always
by horormones
Summary: Darcy starts dreaming about the man with the metal arm and blue eyes at the same time she grows two watermelons on her chest.


_"Протрите его!" A voice in her head snaps._

Wipe him_, it says,_ **wipe it**_!_

* * *

><p>Darcy hated that voice. She hated the language it spoke, and the tone it used with the man her dreams centered on. She didn't see the man who speaks, just the process that follows his order. She truly hated the voice, the man behind it, the things she saw.<p>

All of the hell she bared witness to, without fail, come only in dreams. As far as she knew, none of it was real - but she felt, in her bones, that it was happening somewhere in real life. Wasn't that a horrible thought? What did that mean about her? What did that mean about the safety of the nation's secrets? (Was she watching too much Nicholas Cage?)

The dreams had started up when she hit puberty. Along with double d's, and the loss of her baby fat, she had gotten horrible nightmares that featured one language - and it wasn't English, which was the only language she spoke, obviously; alarm bells usually started to ring at this point - and torture of the horribly abusive and affecting kind.

What she saw in them was usually a mix of blood, murder, good vantage points for sniper guns, verbal and physical abuse and dank, dirty hallways, cells or streets. And a lean man with dark drown hair, cold blue eyes and looks that could possibly sink through the Earth's crust, they were that stony. He was much older than her, considering she had only been 13 to his 30. But he didn't age much, by the looks of it - over a decade, he looked only a year or so older than when she had first seen him, if that.

(Darcy will concede that she exaggerates on the daily, but this time, she wasn't.)

Sometimes, his hair wasn't as long as it usually was, and other times, he had a beard. She felt like the dreams she got from him had been plucked from a barrel of discarded memories that stretched over a long time.

Most of the dreams came from the perspective of the guy, though sometimes she saw him through the Russian speaking guy that seemed to control him. It's almost like a outsider's point of view for her, but really, she's seeing things the way they are.

Orders given to the man were something like, _найти цель_, find the target, or _чтобы она выглядела __как несчастный случай_, make it look like an accident. The threats they gave him when he didn't bow to their will were something like _я сделает вас пропустить __лед_, I will make you miss the ice - which, by the way, Darcy had no idea what that meant, even after years of studying the language later, but wasn't sure she wanted to. It was probably something personal to the man, and it clearly made him pause and obey.

She wondered if it had anything to do with the fact that she'd never seen him sleep.

Her own sleep schedule was a joke. Before she'd gotten the "dreams," and when they mysteriously stopped coming for years at a time, she slept like the dead, whenever she could. After, and when they came as often as multiple times each night, she mostly just sat up in bed and tried not to cry.

And why should she? It wasn't her being forced to do things she didn't want to do. It wasn't her surviving, but not living. It wasn't her. She was just seeing it happen. She didn't have to go through the pain the man went through.

Most nights she stayed up, she couldn't stop herself from the tears.

She saw a lot of of a tube big enough to fit a guy the man's size right before him and his visions went away. She had connected the tube with the whole "being forced" thing early on.

She wondered how he could even go on.

* * *

><p><em>"Вы не человек," they laugh.<em>

You are not a man_._

_He doesn't flinch. He doesn't move, or show any outward emotion. Weapons don't have emotions - they don't have weaknesses._

_He is nothing but a weapon._

* * *

><p>Darcy's parents, friends and teachers knew all about her Dream Guy. It was her mom's fault, naturally. Darcy had told her mom how she didn't like what Dream Guy sounded like when he was getting hurt when she was about 10 years old. By the time she was 24 and going back to college after summer break, Dream Guy had morphed into Liberal Darcy's head fic. Aka, he was not real and she was insane.<p>

Or, you know, he was a Soviet spy doing things in her head that were supposed to give and extract sensitive knowledge.

(She didn't buy it. He was just a tortured soul who didn't age and didn't seem human and also killed a lot of people, some he recognized [Howard Fucking Stark! Oh my _goooooood_! Who the fuck was Dream Guy and why did _Howard Fucking Stark_ know him!?], most he didn't even know who was. She got as much info on his victims as he did, and it was little to none. Scary, but it happened. It wasn't enough to put her in danger of murder, though, so the paranoid elderly assuming he was using her body as a Cold War storage container could suck it.)

The soviet part, yes, the spy part, okay, she'll concede to that, but the whole brain-dump thing? Hell no.

The visions/dreams she got were not on either of them. He didn't seem the type to broadcast his past (or, you know, present) willingly. It was fate/God/the powers that be/the American government making her have dreams of him.

She wondered if she was one of the few people on Earth to have Soul Mate visions before meeting her actual soul mate.

Nah. She wasn't that special.

* * *

><p><em>He dreams of a girl with curly hair and pale skin and lips that curve into the prettiest thing he's ever seen. She gets older the more he sees her, and he watches as she turns to cynicism to mask something. He isn't sure what she hides, but he wants to know, he thinks.<em>

_Except, he doesn't think. Weapons don't think. Weapons don't _want_. Was he broken?  
><em>

**You're not a weapon**_!_ _Something in him screams at the question._

You're not a weapon and she's special_! It sounds oddly familiar, like he should recognize it, familiar. _

You're Bucky Barnes! You're a **human being**_!_ Fight_!_ **Fight**_!_

_He doesn't like the voice. It makes his head hurt. He wants to know what the voice is saying, but... it hurts too much. Weapons don't hurt. Weapons **shouldn't** hurt.  
><em>

_He stops the voice with a quick jaunt in the realm of mind wipes and cryo tubes._

* * *

><p>Darcy only gets a spot in Stark Tower because Jane offered up her services as the premium SCIENCE! Wrangler. She keeps weird hours, going from Bruce to Jane to Tony, keeping their records and experiment data for them all night. They go on benders, and she stays up with them.<p>

Bruce is nice, quiet and a good paper-keeper. Jane is scatter brained, speed fire and loud. Tony is mouthy, disorganized (like, his desk sags, his paper stacks have paper stacks, and at least three different thing-a-ma-bobs are piled on top of a crate in the middle of the room), and determined.

Dream Guy hasn't shown up in nearly a year, since New Mexico happened - since she and Jane met Thor.

Life is Stark Tower is fun, considering her besties after the SCIENCE! triplets are Thor, the freaking Norse god of thunder, Steve, Captain Flippin' America, Natasha, a woman who could kill a man with her thighs and then go eat a pop tart like it was nothing, and Clint, an ex-carnie with eyesight Like Whoa, all caps.

They don't know about the dreams, or Dream Guy, or anything. She didn't even tell Jane any of the good stories - like the ones where she watched him murder the Stark's, purposefully fail to kill their son, and then get beat and tortured for it. Fun times, man.

One thing she forgot to mention. Every time Dream Guy (Barnes/Asset/It, those are the things he's been called) dreams came around, it was like she was on a 24/7 period. She got migraines, stomach aches, fevers sometimes and aches every where.

So, when Dream Guy dreams first happens around her new place of residence, it of course has to happen in front of the whole team of highly overprotective superheroes. In fact, the sudden charlie horse she gets hurts so bad in the first second, she just goes down, the plate in her hand shattering all over the floor. She groans, which was not the best thing to do in the situation she was in, and then groaned again, but louder, because gotdam did it hurt.

What? She was in pain. Fuck you too, Dream Guy. She hoped he got the same shit she did every time their game started back up.

Steve - Captain America, who, by the way, was a shit stirrer to Darcy's complete surprise - rushed in as soon as the third groan was breaking off.

"Goddamn Dream Guy," she mutters into her arm, which she caught herself with, thankfully. On some distant level of her brain, she knew and understood that Steve has super hearing - that's probably how he knew to come when he did, she wasn't _that_ loud - and that he definitely heard her. But, most of her was focused on the migraine she could feel rolling in like a storm cloud. "I'm gonna yell at you _so_ hard whenever we meet."

She's mostly talking to herself, but the last bit is directed to Dream Guy. He won't hear it, but it's out in the open, and she'll be keeping that threat - _promise_ - for sure.

Tony and Clint storm in after him, and she groans once again, which only serves to worsen her splitting head pain. "Darce!" Clint barks, and she realizes they've been calling her name.

Ugh. "I'm good," she moans, before making a move to roll over onto her back. All three boys shake their heads, though, so she stays put, not really minding. Steve gingerly walks over to her, crouches down, and picks up some glass shards. "Whatcha all doing in here?" She asks.

Tony gives her a weird look. When he speaks, he's oddly serious. "We heard glass shattering and you groaning in pain. Excuse us for checking on you."

Darcy felt like a heel for a moment, then shakes her head. She felt kind of loopy, like she always does before the dreams/visions start back up. "It's 'kay," she tells him, and then turns her focus to Clint, who moved in that silent weird way so that she didn't know he had even moved. He lifted her up by her armpits, then adjusted her so she was being held carefully in his arms.

"What happened?" He asked, trying his hardest to not step on glass or Steve's fingers picking up said glass and he walked over to where Tony stood.

Her tongue was loose, so she said, "Barnes - I call him Dream Guy - is waking up, I think. I don't get the dreams when he's asleep. I don't really know, I just know I'm gonna get his stuff."

"'Stuff'?" Tony mouthed to Clint, who shrugged as best he could. Clint set her on her feet, and made sure she could stand, which she could, but at _what price_?

Steve, however, had looked over to the trio, now all by the door where her saviors had rushed in. "What'd you say his name was, doll?"

Darcy frowned. "Barnes? I've heard him get called that, Asset and It, so I dunno if that's his real name, or if he's even a real person. I'm pretty sure, though, he doesn't seem fake. Willow didn't either, though," she said to herself.

Tony spun her to look at him, his hands on her shoulders. "When you get the dreams he's in, what does that feel like?"

Darcy sobered for a moment, and thought about it. "It feels... real. Like I'm watching 3d memories, but they're not mine, that's all. Why?"

Tony, the lucky bastard having met his soul mate already, asks, "have you considered this guy is your One?"

She shrugs. Duh. She wants to tell Tony that, for some reason, so she says, "duh." as dramatically as possible. His face scrunches up, and she raises a challenging eyebrow.

"Are you high? Because if you're not, Dream Guy is your boo, and you're one of the lucky ones."

This time, her faces scrunches up, and all three superheroes look at her questioningly. They were probably wondering why she wasn't happy to know what her soul mate looked like.

"Um, first, no. Not lucky. All night, I get watch him get tortured for not wanting to do something horrible. Or, you know, do the thing and then have real pain, not just man pain. Second, if I'm getting his, he's getting mine, and he never shows it. Every time he says something they don't like, they wipe him. I told you they call him an it, right? Because they do. His name is Asset. He-" She cuts herself off at the last second.

"Sounds like he's in a bad place," Steve said slowly.

"No shit," agrees Darcy.

"What kind of horrible things?" Clint asked then, voice hard. He was brainwashed once, too, and it sounded to him like the same thing, just different circumstances and details. "What did you mean by 'wipe'?"

"Like, I've seen him kill people before. Really nasty, bloody deaths, too. And I meant they sit him down in a chair, and rewire his brain. He screams, without fail, every time, so it can't be fun." She shudders, and pointedly ignores Tony, who she knows will be the next to say something.

"Where is he? Do you know?" He asks, his voice light. Light, like this wasn't a serious situation that the Avengers were about to jump on.

"Russia, I think."

"You think?" Steve asks, leaning against the counter. She nods. "Have you seen landscape? Or do they speak Russian?"

"Lots of curse words, orders and the like," she agreed.

Tony cut right into the very tail end of her sentence with, "why aren't you looking at me? What happened with him that you don't want me to know about? You two get it on to each other?"

"No," she says, stonily. She entertains the idea for half a second, though, and it doesn't sound half bad at all.

"What, then?" He demands. "He sounds like every other POW I've ever read or heard about, aside from the whole kill-" he cuts off. "Darcy?" He asks, voice tiny.

Clint and Steve both get it at the same time, that something about what Tony was ranting about was serious business.

With the attention of two ripped superheroes and a panicking billionaire, Darcy bursts. "I watched him kill your parents!" She says maybe too loudly, and then slaps a hand over her mouth, taking a step back at the look on his face.

His face was a mess of devastated, angry and nostalgic. "What?" He finally gets out, his voice as blank as ever.

She swallows. The loopiness was completely gone. "I saw him sabotage their car. How- your dad, he, he knew Dream Guy. Called him Barnes. Asked him to help your mother, but she was already - already," she stops, looking down. "Do you want me to go on?" He nods jerkily. "Your dad called him Bucky - said he knew that Dream Guy hadn't died. Then Dream Guy kicked the car, and they went into the ditch. Your dad hit his head, and - you know the rest," she finished lamely.

Clint seemed to be the only one not looking five different shades of horrified. He clapped his hands cheerily, like he thought it would loosen the mood. "Who wants to go have a long, long talk about what they've seen in their dreams for - let me guess - years?"

Darcy groaned, but raised a hand anyway, knowing that she would have to bare all now that Tony knew.

Tony and Steve were both frozen, so she and Clint had to drag them to the couches in the living room. When she sat down, she saw the anger on Tony's face and the truly decimated look on Steve's, and wondered what she had done.

* * *

><p><em>He wondered what he would do when he met his soul mate. Orders were to kill them - but he didn't want to. He didn't want to kill the girl with the blue eyes and the dark hair and the mouth and the English and the toothy smile. <em>

_Funny that the first time he wants something in his memory, it's something that he doesn't want nor thinks he deserves. Funny. He doesn't know anymore._

_When he wakes up, they give him an hour to_ _be prepared for anything. He takes the time to sleep - he doesn't need to use the hole in the floor, nor is he hungry or thirsty - and hopes to see the girl._

_There she is. She isn't alone, she is surrounded by men, and she looks sick to her stomach. He wonders if this has to do with what she's hiding, or if she even still hides the secret that evaded him. It has been many years since he last saw her - maybe she is in a better place, now. The men around her look vaguely like they are in shock - only two of them, he corrects himself._

_One has dark hair, and the others have blonde hair. The dark haired one looks outraged. The happy blonde looks constipated. The other blonde... He cannot focus enough on the face to make out details. He gets a headache when he tries. He cannot make out any words, though he knows they are being said._

_He curses his cryo drugs for the first time. **Not** for the first time, he thinks._

_Weapons don't think._

_He doesn't dare tell Handler about his recent thinking. He is hurt enough._

* * *

><p>Darcy spends hours recounting what she remembers of Drea- <em>Bucky Fucking Barnes<em>' dreams/visions/memories to the Avengers. Thor was mostly content to learn more about the Midgardian soul mate thing and the thought that he will saving another life ASAP. Natasha and Tony are stone statues, listening but not reacting. Steve won't stop reacting. He was the one who thought that her guy was his old bestie. Clint listens with rapt attention, and asks questions. She felt hot under their stares (and in Tony's case, glares).

She is not above selling her Dream Guy's secrets to save his life. She thinks that he'll be angry, though she doesn't know why, 'cause she can tell he's miserable when she sees him.

They plan a rescue mission, and it goes on almost without a hitch. Tony goes off on his own, against the blanket orders of stay in sight as best you can, and try not to cause a scene until after he's rescued. They fight off the expected baddies, they search the building, and that's when Tony goes off on his own.

Tony finds Bucky Barnes. _He looks dead_, Tony says over the comm, a touch too excitedly. Darcy gets it, really, she does. He has every right to be angry about his parents' murderer being someone he was expected to save (and maybe even live with, if they let Darcy do that). But he still had a job to do, and she thinks he's going to go for the gold and kill her guy himself. Somehow, Tony gets back under control (as in, less excitement about Bucky's death is had), and they fly Bucky home. He's drugged the entire ride there, and is supposed to wake up in the tower, where he knows it's safe. (They don't explain how he'll know it's safe, but they don't care, either.)

Darcy doesn't think it's going to work. She tries to sit in his room with him, but Steve won't let her, and she wonders why she's listening to a 90 year old douche bag. Then, she remembers - a, he is the embodiment of _Perfect American_, how could she not, b, she has working brain cells and c, her libido thought Commander Steve Rogers was too much, and therefore defected to him. Not to mention he was the best tactical mind of the 20th century.

When he wakes up, it's to Steve. Steve can barely walk out of the room when he can finally get drugs back in Bucky's system. Clint doesn't fare much better, and Tony doesn't even come onto the floor that Bucky is on.

Darcy sneaks in, with the help of Jarvis. Bucky wakes up when she's in there, and she can tell something is wrong with him. She'd been watching live video feeds since he came in, and the difference between him waking up for the fist time, and him waking up after being called Bucky by two different strangers is insane.

When they lock eyes, he cowers into the bed, and so, she waits him out.

* * *

><p>He had been awoken to a place he didn't know. That was not new.<p>

The room was warm. He was clothed. There was a bed under him.

He sees a blonde man who calls him Bucky within seconds of noticing he's awake. He attacks. He feels sharp pain in his neck, then falls unconscious.

The next time he wakes, there's another blonde man doing something with a small, black rectangle. He looks angry.

It is a waiting game. Blonde Man #2 sees his eyes are open after nearly ten minutes, and the Asset can do nothing but punch him at the "Bucky" that comes out of his mouth.

He doesn't like the word. Bucky. It is just a word, yet strangers always seem to call him Bucky. He wonders if it is a name he once went by, but pushes the thought away. He did

not go by anything other than Asset and Winter Soldier. Weapons didn't have names.

Weapons are not named Bucky.

The room fills with gas the second the Blonde Man leaves, and he passes out.

The next time he wakes, it is to someone familiar to him, if only through dreams.

She is beautiful in person, his Dream Girl/soul mate. She has a rectangle in her hands like the second Blonde Man, but she is looking at it anxiously. He wants to ease her anxieties. He doesn't know why.

He is very confused.

She sees he is awake and does not call him Bucky like the blonde men. Instead, she raises an eyebrow and waits.

He does not speak. Weapons speak when spoken to, not before.

Eventually, she says, "I'm Darcy. What's your name?"

He does not have a name. He tells her so, deciding to be civil with her. She is not a threat, and if she was, he would be more than capable of taking her down.

She looks sad. He wants to know why - he has wanted much too much in these last awakenings - but does not act on his curiosity.

"We'll have to get you one. How about Bucky?" She asks, but at the sound of the last word, his face turns into a snarl. He does not know why being called or named Bucky is something he is adamant against. He does not question it. It must be part of his training. "Okay," she backpedals, "how about James? Is that better?"

He considers it, ignoring that he has not had a name since he can remember, ignoring that he is somewhere new and not being treated like the weapon he is. He likes the feeling he gets talking to this girl, despite the fact that she is the least threatening of those he has woken to. Finally, he nods, though he is not sure why he does it.

It's then he realizes that she is unarmed. That is a mistake on his part - he was trained to see things like that immediately, but the circumstances under which he woke all three times had him confused and stupidly un-oriented. He reaches for the pistol in his ankle holster, but it is not there. He checks his person. He has no weapons just as the girl does not either.

He questions himself just exactly where he is then. Weapons are not to be unarmed, nor are Handlers and Technicians and Leaders. But he cannot ask. He must wait to be given his mission parameters.

"Alright, you'll be James. I have a quick question - do you like working for HYDRA?"

James cocks his head. He has no reason to dislike the organization other than the wipes, but those are necessary. "I suppose."

"Damn it. Okay, well, let's get this over with now. I'm not HYDRA. I'm not even KGB, or Russian. I'm an American on the side of the Avengers... Why aren't you killing me?"

James does not want to kill her. She is not HYDRA. But she is brave. He likes that. He will not kill her; he will be civil. "I do not want to," he tells her, in a tone that says it should be obvious, and likes the way she smiles at him when he says that.

He wants to make her happy. He is not sure why, but he will make sure that she is.

* * *

><p>Months of excruciating deprogramming (<em>"James, this is your room. Yes, it's all yours. Everything in it. Throw out what you don't want, or do anything with it, really. Yes, I'm serious. James, if you don't want people in here, create a code and nobody'll come in - they won't be able to unless they know the code. Seriously."<em>) later, Darcy couldn't hold it in anymore.

Call her what you will, and risk it being true, but patient would _not_ be true. Waiting months to confront the guy on if he dreamed about her? Torture. Watching as he slowly went one step forward (talking to Steve), then went two steps back (lashing out at all possible people, and lets not forget the threats that were sometimes hourly)? Hell.

Keeping mum about the freaking dreams? She may as well have been in a pop tart factory and not be allowed to touch or eat anything.

So, one day, in Darcy fashion, she walked up to him in the kitchen and word vomited to him, which he was - sadly - used to. He was just sitting there, enjoying a bowl full of the cereal he'd liked the most at first (and had promptly eaten twenty bowls of) when she basically speed walked up to him in her I Work For Tony Stark heels - aka, the best and highest - and spit up all of her questions.

"So, James. I have a question, which might lead to more, but I'm definitely going to need some of your time, okay?"

He nodded slowly, eyes searching her face while staying stupidly blank. She hated that. He seemed so eager to please her, but he never gave or got any in return to himself. It was infuriating.

"Okay, great. So. Have you ever dreamed about me, because I have about you, and honestly, I'm a little surprised you and I are sane enough to be walking around with the normal people. Well, I wouldn't count Tony or Pepper or Steve or... anyone we live with, really, normal at all, but you get my point. That's something I want to add onto this, by the way - we seem really tuned in to each other's frequencies, which is kind of weird for people who only knew each other for a little while, right? Except, I've known you since I was Bombshell Bowling Ball back in middle school and I-"

"Darcy," he says and she stops instantly. James isn't one to talk without being prompted, even after he had been told over and over again that it was fine for him to shout to the rooftops about the smallest things. He clears his throat, looks down in the way she had always taken as deference - which pissed her off, he was a grown man and she was not his boss or anything like it - and then starts quietly, "I have dreamed about you. I've been dreaming about you since before I met you."

That would've sounded creepy if she hadn't been relieved out of her skull.

She paused. "So."

"So," he agreed. So would forever be their always, apparently.

"...Wanna be my hot date?" She grinned. Good a way as any to start a relationship with one's soul mate. (Which, whoa, head trip.)

"Sure." (He was just as eager as always. It was adorable, even if it was a Russian Spysassin that she was describing.)


End file.
